


the thought that lingers

by liraels



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, in this house we're all horny for public transport, much ensues, premise: eve hauls ass and actually gets on the train at aberdeen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:14:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24555235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liraels/pseuds/liraels
Summary: “I know you’re awake, Eve,” Villanelle says softly. “I’ve been thinking. I’ve never seen you smile.”“You can’t be very funny, then,” Eve replies, pressing her lips together.“I am very funny. I don’t try, mind you, but people tell me so.”“I’m not people.”“No,” Villanelle murmurs. “You’re really not.”~The train from Aberdeen to London takes eight hours, give or take. Eight hours in which Eve and Villanelle have naught to do but – God forbid – talk.
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Comments: 39
Kudos: 490





	the thought that lingers

**_Villanelle - 7:31pm_ **

This time it’s Villanelle who is taken by surprise. The carriage is empty, and Villanelle alone, and then suddenly – _Eve_ , strolling up the aisle as the train starts to rattle and shudder. She stops beside Villanelle’s seat, lost and staring, like a dog who’s caught its tail.

“Villanelle,” she says, simply.

Villanelle waves. Eve doesn’t, doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, barely shifts her weight as the train jolts forward. Seeing Eve like this – still, perfect, as if Villanelle herself had the pleasure of carving her from stone – turns the world down several notches. Villanelle straightens, focuses, her blood pumps and her lungs fill and empty.

She has a name for these moments now, when their paths cross and both of them stop in their tracks. When they part, the world will start up again, they’ll fling themselves away from each other only to collide at some later point down the line. For now, though, it’s like a vice has closed around them. There’s no letting go until one of them makes a move.

So Villanelle makes a move: she stands up, and she kisses her.

It’s sudden. Eve’s surprise makes itself known with a muffled _mph_. It’s also quick – too quick for Eve, apparently, who leans forward as Villanelle pulls away.

“No, Eve,” she says, delicately removing Eve’s fingers from where they threaten to pick threads from her coat, “that was just payback.” However much she would like to know what Eve would do with another kiss – would it be hard, soft? Would she use her tongue or her teeth? – she steps pointedly back, plasters on a grin and sits down, gesturing for Eve to sit beside her.

Eve, as expected, refuses Villanelle’s offer, choosing instead to sit across the aisle. She rests her elbows on her knees and her chin on her hands and frowns at Villanelle like she’s about to interrogate her. Villanelle doesn’t know if she can stand Eve’s cross-examination, she’s fragile enough, today. God, _fragile_ , when has she ever been less than invulnerable, impenetrable?

“You come here often?” she asks quickly, before Eve can speak the question shaped by her lips; Villanelle knows how awful the line sounds, but she thinks it might make Eve smile.

Eve doesn’t smile. “Do I frequent the evening train from Aberdeen to London, is that what you’re asking?”

Villanelle shrugs. “It was a joke, Eve.”

“ _Villanelle_ ,” Eve says, and she pauses after she says it, as if savouring the act of speaking the name aloud. “I – None of this is a joke. You left Konstantin having a heart attack on the platform.”

“And?” Villanelle scrunches her nose. “So did you. Look at us, we’re assholes.”

Eve furrows her brow. Villanelle thinks it matches her nose. “Are you going to kiss me again?” Eve asks.

“Do you want me to?”

“I don't — No.”

Villanelle pretends to consider it. “I wasn't going to, anyway. The way we're tracking, the next one should be coming up in...hm, give it three weeks.”

“God, shut up.”

“If you're busy then, we can always reschedule. I'm flexible.”

The corners of Eve's mouth twitch as she stares at her hands. Villanelle counts that as a win for now. “So, are you going to ask, _Villanelle, how was Aberdeen_?”

Eve just stares at her and raises her eyebrows.

“It was good,” Villanelle continues, “thanks for asking. I discovered I am shit at golf. I'm pretty good at hitting people in the head with golf clubs, though. And scaring Americans.”

“Not this American.”

“No, I think I am pretty good at that, too. Not my fault you _enjoy_ it. How did you find Aberdeen?”

Eve shakes her head. “I don't know — I didn't see much of it. I —” she trails off, her brow furrowing deeper. Villanelle wants to touch it, smooth those soft ridges with her thumb, and so she does. Or, she attempts to do so; Eve jolts back just as Villanelle starts to reach out across the aisle. “What are you doing?”

“You look stressed.”

Eve scoffs. “I look stressed? I’ve just spent two days chasing you up and down the length of the country. I haven’t slept, I’ve barely eaten, I’ve – “

“You haven’t slept?”

Eve looks at her sharply. Villanelle isn’t sure what she’s done to deserve that kind of look – except shoot her, she guesses. But while neither of them have forgotten Rome, it is also true that neither of them have yet broached the subject.

Villanelle tries again, this time resting a hand on Eve’s knee. She can’t help curling her fingers under Eve’s thigh, turning what should be a comforting gesture into something a little more…well. Eve doesn’t comment, but Villanelle quietly thrills at it, at touching a part of Eve she’s never touched before.

“You’re here,” Villanelle says. She keeps her voice low, though to soothe and not to seduce. Seduction, in any case, can come later. It’s eight hours to London, give or take. “You’ve found me. You can rest.”

Eve bites her lip, then sighs, looking at the ceiling. “How do I know you won’t – “

“ _Eve_ ,” she says, forcefully, and tightens her grip on Eve’s thigh, certain now that she can feel a heartbeat there. She could feel that heartbeat anywhere. “Rest, please.”

Eve sighs again but seems to acquiesce. Her decision to sleep is much more than just that, they both know it – it’s an admission. It’s Eve telling Villanelle _I trust you._ It’s Eve saying, _for once, I will let myself be vulnerable, instead of you making me so._ Eve’s decision made, the tension expels from her body in a ripple that Villanelle can see and hear.

“Wake me up in Edinburgh,” Eve mumbles. “And you’d better give me that ridiculous fucking coat or I’ll crick my neck.”

It none too pleases Villanelle to give Eve her coat as a pillow. She only hopes it’ll smell her like her when she gets it back. “Sleep well.”

A grunt, muffled by green wool, is the only reply. Villanelle watches, because of course she does, until Eve’s closed eyes stop fluttering and her breathing settles. She can’t help thinking of a mouse asleep in a lion’s den – absurd, really. Villanelle could no more hurt Eve than the mouse could hurt the lion. Rome, aside.

Because she is thinking about Rome. She’s been thinking about Rome since Eve stepped on the train, but she’s trying not to think about her _feelings_ about Rome – _objectivity_ , she tells herself, and it comes in Dasha’s clotted accent, _objectivity and rationality_. _Nostalgia, sentiment, these are weak things for weak people. You save your passion for the killing and the killing alone. Makes you stronger, that way. Makes you love it._

Rome, though, and Eve – killing Eve. She felt no passion in that at all. She couldn’t even stay to watch Eve’s soul turn to glass in her eyes. Eve was, she thinks, the most _objective_ kill she’s made in her life. She has no intention of repeating it.

They’re halfway to Edinburgh when the silence of the near-empty carriage is disrupted by a ticket inspector trundling down the aisle, and Villanelle remembers that Eve doesn’t have a ticket. Even more than that, she’ll tear the inspector’s throat out if he dares to wake Eve from her sleep. Eve’s charged Villanelle with protecting her, at least while she sleeps. Protecting her from Villanelle herself, yes, but also from being thrown off the train and forced to stay the night at some local Scottish shitpit with nothing but a singular pub and a cheese-rolling hill.

When the inspector arrives at Villanelle, she rolls out that airy accent she used in Aberdeen – she’s quite fond of it – and it’s almost a relief to become someone else, for a little while.

**_Eve – 9:53pm_ **

Eve wakes with effort – slowly, limbs aching, and her eyes tightly shut. She doesn’t want to open them, not when this dream is so good, not when it’s lingering so long. Light fingers trace her forehead before travelling across her scalp, twisting and winding through her tangled hair. Eve imagines it’s Villanelle, and at first she doesn’t hate herself for it. After a minute of losing herself in those meandering hands, though, that familiar self-loathing rears its head – _she shot you, she killed you, what is this, what the fuck is wrong with you_. After another minute, she remembers this isn’t a dream, and it’s just Niko.

She opens her eyes. It’s not Niko.

Villanelle sits across from her, head tilted forward against the rattling window. There’s an odd expression on her face, her eyes tracking her own hands as they continue to move through Eve’s hair.

Eve doesn’t move, yet, but she says, “I’m awake, you know.”

“I know. Good morning. Evening. We’re nearly there.”

Eve tells her body to sit up. It doesn’t immediately obey.

“Ticket inspector came around,” VIllanelle says, still looking at Eve’s hair, and not her eyes. “Don’t worry. I charmed him.”

“You didn’t kill him?”

Villanelle masks genuine offence with put-on indignance when she says, “Of course not. Who do you think I am?”

It’s the warm feeling in Eve’s stomach, the tingling down her neck, the shame that she dreamed those hands belonged to Villanelle, the disappointment to think they were Niko’s and the remembrance that Niko is in hospital with half his throat torn out – it’s these things that make her say, “You’re an assassin. A psychopath.”

Villanelle’s hands abruptly still. “Do you mean that?”

Eve looks at Villanelle, who’s finally meeting her eyes, and – of course she doesn’t. She’s seen the change in Villanelle since she glimpsed her through the train window. She’s not different, exactly. It’s more like – discovery. Like she’s dredged up something Eve thought she’d buried, and now she wears it on her sleeve, behind her eyes. And if Eve’s being honest, she’s never thought of Villanelle in such simple terms. Not back then, and certainly not now. Villanelle is _Villanelle_ , and Villanelle is more than a few choice nouns.

“No,” Eve says, and sits up before Villanelle can start the thing with her hands again. “I don’t know. I need to clean up.”

Villanelle lets her go without further comment. Eve’s legs give slightly as she heads down the aisle, she hasn’t had nearly enough sleep. She’s also starving. In the bathroom, she washes her face and decidedly doesn’t look at herself in the mirror. Her hair, though, is an utter _mess_. She scrapes her fingers through it a few times because the feeling resurrects the ghost of Villanelle’s touch, then she decides she doesn’t care. It’s, what, five or six hours back to London? She can survive. She can do this.

She stays in the bathroom, does half a cryptic crossword on her phone, checks the news headlines, texts Bear that she’s on the way back to London and thinks about texting Carolyn. She returns to her seat only when she feels the train start to slow.

Villanelle is slouched with her forehead pressed to the window, and it’s a minute before Eve realises that she’s pretending to be asleep. Definitely pretending, because while Eve has never seen a sleeping Villanelle she’s sure that the actual article would be...calmer. Looser. She certainly wouldn't be sporting that predatory smirk.

“Villanelle,” she says, then, louder, “Villanelle. I'm tired and I'm hungry, can we please get off this train.”

Villanelle cracks open a crocodile eye. “Hello, tired and hungry. I think you've been avoiding me.”

“I went to _Aberdeen_ to find you, damn it.”

“Yes. And you weren’t prepared for what you'd find, were you?”

“I could say the same about the bus.”

Villanelle expels a huffy breath. “Fine,” she says, standing and stretching, now more feline than crocodile. “But no more hiding in the bathroom. I'm bored enough as it is.”

They disembark, and Villanelle attracts more than a few looks for her (again, fucking ridiculous) get-up while they sort out their connecting train. Eve is sure to stand just behind her and to the side, hyper-aware of their proximity. There's this careful way they move around each other, in formation, like twin birds of prey. She hopes her brain will let up with the animal metaphors soon.

Villanelle doesn't say much, except to complain once again about the five-hour trip in their future. Eve wonders, not nearly for the first time, what the hell she _thinks_ about.

She got bored while on the train without Eve for, what, twenty minutes? What was she doing, what was she thinking in that time alone? Villanelle has always seemed so dynamic to her, always on the move, constantly _doing_. When Eve thinks of Villanelle, she thinks of tools — _knife_ and _hands_ and _gun_ — or of actions — _watch_ and _kill_ and _fuck_.

She doesn't think of Villanelle sitting alone on a near-empty train, hands stilled in her lap, eyes unfocused, nothing to do but think and wait. She thinks of it now.

Eve leaves Villanelle on the platform to find them both some dinner — but also because it's so hard to think in straight lines around her, and she really just needs to _think_. She locates some overpriced sandwiches. Still, all she does think about is Villanelle, alone again on the platform, waiting for Eve and the train. Where does her mind go when her body is still?

Eve suspects she knows some of the answer, but, as always with Villanelle, there’s sure to be uncharted depths. Eve, God help her, wants nothing more but to chart them.

**_Villanelle – 11:21pm_ **

“Do you remember when you listened to me masturbate?”

“Oh, God.”

“Oh. So you do. You did.” Villanelle considers the pink flush on Eve's cheeks. It's very sweet. “I thought you would.”

“Um.”

“Why are you looking at the ceiling? It's not very interesting. Not nearly as interesting as looking at me, for instance.”

Eve looks at the floor instead. “Because I don't know if I can have this conversation right now?”

“If you're not sure, we can at least try. Then you'll know. Because I want to know, did you masturbate too?”

“Oh, God,” Eve says again, craning her neck to look around the carriage. There’s no one close, just two couples halfway down the carriage and a twenty something with headphones in. Villanelle wouldn't have brought it up, otherwise. She is a lady. “Look, I don't want to talk about this.”

Villanelle narrows her eyes, but it doesn't make Eve any more fathomable. "Don't be embarrassed, Eve. This is an adult conversation.”

“No. No, Villanelle, I mean...I mean I don't want to talk about Rome.”

This is fair enough, Villanelle thinks. Very much...fair enough. She wants to – not apologise, but...something. Or maybe she just wants to think about Eve masturbating. Any more complicated thoughts are strictly off limits.

So she thinks about that for a few minutes, alternating her gaze between where Eve sits across from her and the muddy fields that rush by the window. When she glimpses lone farmhouses alight in the distance, she thinks about what Eve's laboured breaths would sound like and she definitely doesn't think of home.

“What did you think about?” Eve asks.

“When I was masturbating?”

“No, Jesus, I meant...when I was in the bathroom, just before. And when I left you on the platform. You were alone, nowhere to go, nothing to do. What did you think about?”

“You,” Villanelle says, automatically.

Eve presses her lips together, shakes her head slightly. “Sure, but, there’s more than that. Isn't there?”

“You,” Villanelle repeats, but there's a prickle at the back of her throat, and a voice deep down that says: _my mother_.

“Okay, well, what about me?”

Villanelle hesitates; what she plans to say is true, it's just less true than what she can't, doesn't want to say. Not yet. Maybe not ever. So she gives Eve the half-truth.

“Killing you,” she says. _Killing_ _my mother_. “Killing you dead and walking away.” _Killing my mother dead and walking away. Burning her corpse. Learning what tears feel like. I didn't know that they would burn._

Eve doesn't react other than to say, “That's it?”

Villanelle has spent so long chasing Eve, being chased in turn, watching and being watched. But Eve — Eve _knowing_ her, seeing it, glimpsing weakness, God, it makes Villanelle want to kill her again.

Alright, no, it doesn't. But Eve must see something of that impulse in Villanelle’s eyes, because she doesn't press the issue any further.

“What can we talk about, then?” Eve says, broaching a minute of rather tense silence. She keeps shuffling in her seat — when she moves there's a 50/50 chance her knee will bump against Villanelle's.

“You’re the one who made Rome off-limits.”

“And you're the one who won't talk about...whatever _that_ is.”

Villanelle consciously hardens her stare. “Maybe we just won't talk, then.”

“Was that a come-on?”

“Nope. Wait three weeks.”

Eve groans at this. Again, she doesn't smile. Villanelle’s never really wanted to make Eve smile before — gasp, moan, bare her teeth, yes. She’s not even quite sure how smiling works, just that she wants to see Eve do it, and she wants to be the cause.

Telling Eve about her mother would not make Eve smile.

“You know, Eve,” she says, determined to change the subject, to feel that crackle of energy between them again instead of the cloying weight of Eve's concern, “you bought me dinner. I wasn't aware this was a date.”

“If this is a date, then I’m very underdressed.”

“Ach, _pish_ ,” Villanelle scoffs, slipping into that airy Scottish she adopted for the Aberdeen job. It sounds delicious wrapped around swear words. “You're perfect.” Villanelle isn’t sure when she stopped noticing what Eve wears. She’s just – Eve, all of her. Daggy turtleneck inclusive.

“You're awful.”

“No, I’m perfect, too.”

Eve rolls her eyes, looking back out the window. Villanelle looks too, or pretends to. Really, she's looking at Eve's hands, still and unmoving in her lap, and Eve's eyes, beginning to go hazy and unfocused.

“What are _you_ thinking about?” she asks, and it takes both of them a little by surprise.

Eve answers quickly, “You.”

“And?”

Eve's eyes are trained, like sniffer dogs, like spotlights. Villanelle wants to waver under them, but she doesn't. “I think I killed Dasha,” Eve says, finally.

Villanelle can’t help but smile. “ _I_ killed Dasha. Jinx.”

“With a golf club. I used my foot. Crushed her ribcage. It was pretty visceral.”

“Mm. Little bit sexy. Why?”

“She tried to kill Niko. Pitchforked him through the neck while I watched. And then she framed you.”

Villanelle wrinkles her nose. “Not my style.”

“I know,” Eve sighs, running a hand through her hair. “I’d know you anywhere.”

Villanelle looks at her for a few long moments, thinks about her hair between Villanelle's own fingers. Thinks about her foot crushing Dasha's black heart.

“I'll tell you later,” she says, quietly, capturing Eve's eyes with pointed intent. “What happened. What I'm thinking about. We still have...” she checks her phone, “nearly four hours left.”

**_Eve – 1:37am_ **

Eve wakes again from what must have been a light and scattered sleep, twisted and upright, muscles protesting. The rattle of her head against the train window feels nothing like Villanelle's hands in her hair.

The world outside is rendered in pitch, so Eve sees little more than her own tired features reflected back at her. Villanelle is mirrored there too, sitting across from her, doing something on her phone. At some point during her nap Eve must have slouched down, entwined her legs uncomfortably with Villanelle's.

Villanelle frowns down at her phone, a tiny wrinkle between her eyes. Her slender fingers flurry and tap, making Eve think again of what they feel like in her hair, and where they might feel like in other places. Her neck, her hips, wrapped around a smoking gun.

 _Stop thinking about Rome_. You stabbed her, she shot you, you're even, it's as simple as that, isn't? Except it isn’t. It really isn't. Except, Eve thinks Villanelle feels guiltier for shooting her than Eve ever did for stabbing her.

She thought her surreptitiously observing Villanelle’s mirrored countenance went unnoticed, but: “I know you’re awake, Eve,” Villanelle says softly, “I’ve been thinking. I’ve never seen you smile.”

That almost makes Eve smile. But not quite.

“You can’t be very funny, then,” she replies, pressing her lips together instead.

“I am very funny. I don’t _try_ , mind you, but people tell me so.”

“I’m not people.”

“No,” Villanelle murmurs. “You’re really not.”

There’s silence again, and it’s decidedly awkward. Three more hours of _this_ , really? She’s used to dancing around Villanelle, pushing and pulling and teasing, but they’re not dancing, now. They’re sitting opposite one another in a space so enclosed that their knees often brush. They’re still, and static, nothing to do but think and sleep and stare.

This is why it could never work. This is why she said no to Alaska, to spaghetti dinner, to _I love you_. When neither of them is actively chasing, or using, or hunting, there’s really not much to them at all. It’s like they’re even more at odds when neither of them is trying to kill the other.

Eve tells herself these things, doubting their truth but repeating them anyway. It could never work. It will never work, she tells herself. She repeats.

The mantra is tiring, especially when she has such a good excuse to simply stare at Villanelle’s reflection in the window. She stands up and stretches, shaking out her heavy limbs. “I’m going for a walk.”

Villanelle stands too. “I’m only coming with you because I’m bored.”

Eve shrugs, but lets her follow along behind as they walk the length of the train. They pass maybe a dozen people before they reach the last carriage, which is empty and echoing. Eve is about to turn around and walk back the way they came when –

“I’m getting out,” says Villanelle from behind her. “Me and Konstantin. We’re leaving.”

That makes Eve turn, sharply, and Villanelle walks into her. Eve’s hands are clutching at her arms before she can tell them not to. She wants to be hard, like a knife, like a gun, but when she speaks her own voice is disgustingly soft.

“You’re leaving me?”

Villanelle raises her eyebrows, a hint of mocking. “I’m leaving _them_. Look, I didn’t want to tell you until I was sure we wouldn’t be overheard.”

Eve feels suddenly hollow, and there it is, finally – the adrenaline, the sizzling energy she used to feel in Villanelle’s presence. It settles in her stomach like sparkling wine. Her fingernails dig deeper into that ugly green coat.

“You’re leaving,” she repeats. She’s imagined many times what her life would be like without Villanelle but, now, confronted with the reality of it – God, she wants to kill her _again_ for doing this to her.

“I’m moving on. I can’t be an assassin forever, Eve. There’s no retirement plan.”

There’s an odd image that appears in her mind’s eye – a much older Villanelle, lounging on a balcony in Floridian suburbia, completing a jigsaw puzzle with some faceless woman she calls wife.

Eve hates that image. She wants to burn it. So, she says, “You can’t, Villanelle.” And that bubbling in her stomach must be anger, because she also says, “The only thing interesting thing about your life is me.”

Villanelle must recognise her own words thrown back at her, and her neck muscles twitch. Her eyes are suddenly hard, and Eve braces herself for some cutting remark, something to break her down so Villanelle can delight in the shattered pieces of her – but Villanelle says nothing. She works her jaw like she’s trying very hard to suppress a grimace. If Eve didn’t know better, she’d say Villanelle is on the brink of tears.

Eve does know better. Doesn’t she?

“I’m sorry,” Eve says. “I didn’t mean that.”

“What did you mean?”

“I…” Eve meant, _you’re the centre of my life_. She meant, _you’re all I think and all I see_. She meant, _I can’t stand it if I’m not the same for you_. _Please tell me it’s the same for you._ She says, “You would get bored.”

“Eve,” Villanelle sighs, casting her eyes downwards. She crosses her arms over her chest, fingers resting atop Eve’s knuckles where she clutches at Villanelle’s arms. “I killed my mother.”

It’s like a dam breaks, like the fog wrapping around them since they first met up in Aberdeen has transmuted to rushing, cleansing water.

Villanelle takes a deep breath, and when she starts talking again it’s like she just can’t stop. “I killed my mother. She was just like me, but she hated me, I swear we were the _same_ but she _hated_ me. That house was so _dark_ , Eve. My little brother just wanted to see Elton’s farewell tour. She got her darkness in him, too, but the worst part is she _denied_ it. Like it was all me.”

Eve pulls her closer, fisting her hands in Villanelle’s coat. Her forehead collides painfully with Villanelle’s cheek, but Villanelle keeps going, saying into Eve’s hair, “I couldn’t live with her, Eve. I had to – to destroy her, and I did. I stabbed her in the heart with a kitchen knife and – I swear, a person’s life, it just goes further in. It falls inside their eyes until it’s trapped behind them, small and forever. But whatever was in _her_ eyes, it just…it just disappeared. Like I took it inside me.”

Villanelle’s eyes are glassy, she’s rocking slightly back and forth. Eve guides her gently against the nearest wall, smooths down her coat, brushes the hair from her face. It’s awful, but she can’t help but feel relief. Relief that comes in a glorious adrenaline rush, because she _understands_ , now. She understands Villanelle, she knows who she is in this moment, and they’ve nothing left they need to explain to each other. They’re present and equal.

“I don’t want to do it anymore, Eve.”

“No,” she says.

“I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to feel it, I want to – “

“Do I help?

“What?”

“Thinking about me. Does it help?”

Villanelle shakes her head slightly. “It’s the only thing that does. _Yes_.”

Eve considers Villanelle for another few moments, searches her eyes for a reason _not to_. Eve doesn’t find one, so she does: she kisses her. At first, it’s dry, and strange, and Eve feels a little bit like she’s taking advantage, but what’s one more unhealthy fucking thing about the two of them? Villanelle quickly kisses back with not just her lips but her tongue and her teeth, and suddenly it’s Eve against the wall, and Villanelle’s hands in her hair.

It escalates, as with everything they do, and soon Eve is fumbling at Villanelle’s waistband with one hand and pulling one of Villanelle’s hands up her own shirt with the other before Villanelle stops her. Then she remembers they’re on a _train_. They’re on a train, and Eve hates PDA at the best of times, and she was just about to –

“Eve,” Villanelle murmurs, adjusting both of their hands so they’re in more publicly acceptable locations. “I promise, Eve, that when I take you, it'll be with champagne, on silk sheets, and with all the time in the world.”

It’s so stark, so matter-of-fact, that Eve wants to die, for an instant. She wants to die with champagne bubbling in her stomach, she wants to die on silk sheets.

Instead, she follows Villanelle back to their seats. Now, when their knees touch, she doesn’t jolt away.

**_Villanelle – 4:35am_ **

Both of them have caught another couple of hours of sleep and towns and fields have given way to brick and concrete by the time Eve asks Villanelle the big question.

“I shot you,” Villanelle answers, nestling her head into the crook of Eve’s shoulder, “because I had to. Logically. It was the most rational move at the time.”

“I have no idea how to feel about that.”

“Good! You should feel good. It means that love didn’t factor into it.”

“If you loved me,” Eve says, adjusting her chin to sit neatly atop Villanelle’s head, “surely you wouldn’t have shot me.” The train slows, jolts violently as it pulls into King’s Cross, and Villanelle feels Eve squeeze her hand just a tiny bit harder. The window is black and empty; Villanelle can see only the two of them reflected against the night, sitting close, side by side.

“If you loved me, you wouldn’t have stabbed me.”

“Whoever said I loved you?”

“I did.”

Villanelle can’t see it, but she swears that Eve is smiling. She _knows_ it. That’s enough, for now.

**Author's Note:**

> man, i appreciate all the fucking yearning KE gives us but sometimes don't you just want these kids to be frank with each other? i do. and thus this fic was born
> 
> also i have no idea how many people take the night train from Aberdeen but, like, they needed to kiss and they weren’t going to do it in public. So. it's very much Whatever
> 
> btw I’m on twitter @ liraels if anyone would like to lose their minds about these two with me on a different platform! thank you for reading, all!!


End file.
